‘Donating to cancer research’

Submitted by Chris Hiley on Mon 8 Feb 10 - 12:42
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Here’s an interesting thing. On the BBC’s website there’s a story about Julianne McGregor whose best friend Megan Houchins has thyroid cancer and has had treatment for it for over a decade. The intrepid, rather lovely and impressively loyal Julianne is to hula hoop at the top of Mount Kilimanjaro to raise money for cancer research. The money she raises will go towards the World Cancer Research Fund.

As mentioned previously (right at the end of the post, after several reservations about what WCRF does) I find the name World Cancer Research Fund unsatisfactory, as WCRF is dedicated to the “prevention and control of cancer by means of healthy food and nutrition, physical activity and weight management”. So no screening, diagnostic, treatment and psychosocial research, which a lot of people would be thinking of, when donating to cancer research.
 
Research into prevention is legitimate  and right, but ‘cancer research’ is not a synonym for it.
 
The word ‘thyroid’ appears on WCRF’s website only once as of 09.02.10. This suggests to me that thyroid cancer is not high on the list of its research priorities, so either it's rare (it is quite rare) or it's not really considered a cancer likely on current knowledge to be largely amenable to lifestyle interventions. Cancer Research UK says that possible lifestyle risk factors have been suggested by some research reports, but there is no convincing proof as yet.
 
There’s a lot to unpick in the marketing of cancer charities – far too many muddle their corporate ID with their cause, as WCRF do. We ‘out here’ don’t really question how this hangs together because ‘we’, compounded by the people inside cancer charities, have a hugely sentimental attachment to 'cancer research' - albeit for good personal and emotional reasons. This means we may not examine them quite as objectively as we could.  
 
I wonder if Hula Hooping Julianne knows she’s chosen a charity with a narrower remit than its name suggests and that it doesn’t have a close connection with the cancer her friend apparently has?